Success and engagement in family businesses: decision-making

To stay aligned as shareholders of a family business, communication is essential. And to bundle experiences, insights and different opinions into a strong vision and smart strategies, you need more than casual conversation and blind trust. Success is always the result of focused entrepreneurship, courage, perseverance and a bit of luck.

Communicate with the whole family

In family businesses that grow across generations, the number of family members also increases. Cousins who primarily know each other as fellow shareholders have every reason to communicate in an organised way. Drawing on Connecting Communication, we recommend working with circles. In practice, this means everyone can make their voice heard through a subgroup. Representatives from each circle consult in a central circle. During this central meeting, they look after the interests of everyone in their respective circle. Decisions are made using the ‘good enough’ principle. This means the aim is to reach decisions with as few objections as possible. Acceptance of this way of working is much higher than with democratic decisions, where 51% of shareholders can impose their choice on the other 49%. Working with circles can operate on multiple levels. Up to three hierarchical levels, this system is easy to manage. The condition for working smoothly is the willingness to stay connected and the awareness that everyone wants to take care of themselves while living in harmony with others.

Using power as something shared

A power struggle always wastes energy, with one side trying to push through their opinion or confronting others with a fait accompli. We call this ‘power over’. In Connecting Communication, we encourage people to find solutions that work for everyone. This creates a ‘power with’, where everyone wins. The energy people put into their communication is aimed at letting the common interest prevail in a way that benefits each individual. Essential here is the care for connection, the willingness to listen to each other, and the willingness to say clearly and briefly what you want.

Learning Connecting Communication is easy and hard at the same time. Easy because many people gain practical inspiration from reading a book or attending a short training. This conscious reflection on your own communication and the search for alternatives often has an immediate effect. On the other hand, it takes considerable practice to integrate Connecting Communication into daily life. Breaking your own automatic patterns, like judgemental thinking, the conviction that others ‘must’, not being skilled at active listening, blaming yourself and feeling guilty, all of that takes time and deliberate practice. Making mistakes is inevitable, and being allowed to make mistakes is a formidable school. The intention to stay connected more than makes up for these slip-ups.

For those who want to learn more: you will certainly find a suitable training in our open programme.